Escape
by ConiferousSiblings
Summary: Another one originally from my tumblr and possibly the angsty-st thing that I've ever written (though considering its me I still made it pretty sappy). This is a one-shot Pinecest story featuring an older Dipper and Mabel (around 17 or so) coming to terms with their feelings for one another and what they plan to do about them.


The ticking of the clock sounded unnaturally loud to Dipper as he lay back in his bed, his hands tucked behind his head in a pose of forced casualness. There wasn't anyone around so he wasn't really sure who he was trying to fool… probably himself. Every now and then his eyes would dart up to the clock on the wall and then to his closet door. There was a backpack waiting inside that was jammed full of what he'd determined were the essentials… the money he'd saved up from his string of part time jobs, spare clothes, emergency food… an old pocket knife from his ill fated attempt at joining the Boy Scouts as a kid was there too, though he was pretty sure that he wouldn't need any sort of woodland survival type skills for the plan. He hoped not anyway. If it got down to that then it meant that everything else would have already fallen apart at that point.

Dippers hand reached out from behind his head and he reflexively grabbed the old black iron key hanging from the chain on his neck. It had been five years since he had been given the Presidents Key but it hadn't failed to open a door for him yet… Unlike the knife the key was basically essential for the plan, along with a few other trinkets and souvenirs from his various summers spent at Gravity Falls.

They had been working it out now for weeks. Dippers meticulous nature wouldn't let him do anything this important spontaneously… no, there had been long talks & secret code words picked and lists drawn up until he was sure Mabel might get her eyes permanently stuck in the back of her head from having rolled them there so many times… but she had gone along with them. Maybe she had only done it to humor him at first, but Mabel had added her own suggestions and had even pointed out a few crucial facts here and there that Dipper had overlooked which had changed the whole plan overall. More than anything that told Dipper that she wanted this to succeed… that Mabel trusted his judgment about this. They had worked hard to try and account for every contingency and it was as good a plan as Dipper was sure he was able to make… but as the minutes of the clock ticked down and the appointed hour drew closer he could just see more and more holes appearing in their scheme, eating away at it until it now seemed to be as brittle as a crutch made of spun glass.

_We've got some cash, but is it really enough? I guess it will have to be until we can get our hands on more… its not like we haven't picked up a few tricks from Stan on how to get some easy money if we get desperate._

_There's also around a million pictures of us scattered all over the house (not to mention on Mabel's Facebook thanks to her love of ridiculous selfies), so we won't be really inconspicuous if anyone pays even the slightest bit of attention to any posters that get put up. Hopefully human nature will take care of that one since most people don't notice anyone around them if they aren't intentionally drawing attention to themselves._

_Plus those new fake ID's that Mabel made won't really hold up too well if people look at them too hard. At least I was able to convince her not to add googly eyes to these, but I'm pretty sure that anyone who checks them out might think there would be something suspicious about a guy named 'Tyrone Dippingsauce'. _

_It will _never_ work. _

_Do I even _want_ it to work?_

Dipper took a deep breath and shook his head to try and clear the clouds of negativity that had began to gather over him.

_It has to work though… even it it doesn't I at least have to try. I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't._

The teen slumped back against his bed and exhaled his long held breath.

_I hope I can live with myself afterwards if it _does_ work._

_Three months ago_

It's a strange thing to realize that you are in love with your best friend. At the best of times it can be stressful and incredibly conflicting… but when your best friend is closer to you than most… _much _closer… then conflicting doesn't even begin to describe it.

This revelation hadn't come to Dipper all at once - his feelings had been uncovered slowly, with each new fact leading into the other to eventually reveal the truth lurking behind them. Ironically if these little insights had been clues in a mystery story that Dipper was reading he would have thought it was fantastic… but this wasn't a story.

He had noticed the way he smiled when he heard her too-loud laughter, usually at one of her own bizarre jokes. Her jokes were still _terrible _of course, but her laughter was almost like music to him now.

He'd felt the slight flutter in his stomach when he saw her enthusiastically dancing when a song she liked came on the radio. He'd felt a shudder when he noticed himself noticing the curve of her neck and the strangely graceful way that she moved her arms along with the rhythm of the songs.

He'd realized with a start one sleepless night that all of his happiest memories involved her, one way or another.

Dipper wasn't dumb by any stretch of the imagination but it had taken a long time for him to connect the dots, and as he realized these things he'd felt something like dread growing inside him alongside these other new feelings because Dipper's best friend was, and always had been, the one person that he could never be with.

Or so he'd thought.

Once he finally realized what was going on he had tried to hide his feelings from Mabel, but there may have been some part of himself that always secretly wanted her to find out. Dipper had avoided her as best as he could, hoping that separating himself would let him come to terms with these feelings and get over them… or at least give him time to bury them down deep enough that they wouldn't trouble him. Wouldn't make him feel like a freak. Maybe it would have worked, but there's only so far you can go when the person you are trying to avoid lives across the hall from you. Trying to shut her out only made him depressed and it seemed to make her angry, and when Mabel got angry she preferred to meet her problems head on rather than avoid them. It was one of the things that he admired about her normally, but in this case he was dreading the inevitable clash that he knew would arise because of it.

As he predicted Mabel had confronted him one day when he had been sulking off in a little cloud of self loathing and she'd given him a fairly good sized piece of her mind and in his frustration Dipper snapped back at her harder than he normally did. A _lot_ harder than he had meant to, and he felt himself wincing internally at the sound of each word leaving his mouth like a thrown knife. They had fought then, harder than they had fought in years… harder than either of them could even remember fighting with anyone before. There was screaming and accusations and tears had come out from the both of them and to Dippers panicking mind it was like the world was crashing down around his ears, but somehow before either of them knew what was happening they had ended up kissing. It had been a short kiss, but it had an intensity that made Dipper think the top of his head was going to blow off like a lovestruck cartoon – he'd still been in a daze when his sister had fled the room with her face cherry red and her eyes glittering with unshed tears. When Dippers head finally cleared he realized something very important that set his mind spinning…

_She _had kissed_ him_.

He followed her, though he felt all his old fears and insecurities screaming at him in the back of his mind with each step he had taken toward her room. The thought of her finding out his real feelings… of her _hating _him was almost too much to bear but he fought them back, crushed them deep until he was able to control himself once again. Even if she ended up hating him he couldn't leave her freaking out like this without trying to help somehow. The breath had caught in his dry throat when he had finally summoned up the guts to knock on the door to her room, but despite all the panic Dipper felt she had let him in without more than a few seconds hesitation. The twins had sat in hesitant silence for a few minutes before Mabel had started to talk, slowly and with a dull tone that was painfully unlike her normally cheery self. She told him that she loved him. That she was _in _love with him. She told him how she had been worried that he had somehow figured it out and _that _was why he'd been acting so strange toward her lately… because he'd been disgusted with her… had thought she was a freak. It had become almost too much for her to take and she'd just finally snapped when she saw him moping off somewhere, pointedly avoiding her.

The tears he'd seen her holding back earlier had started to break free then, a slow drip that flowed over the curve of her cheeks as her back trembled and shuddered.

_Me, _disgusted with_ her_?

Dipper was stunned and when Mabel saw the look of astonishment on his face she had taken it for a confirmation of all of her own worst fears and the dam on her emotions burst as she broke into full sobs. He had rushed to her then, pulled her close to his chest and wrapped his still-somewhat-noodly arms around her shoulders. Her face was buried in his chest, soaking his faded old Monstermon shirt with tears. He'd raised a hesitant hand and started to run it softly through her chestnut curls and he bent his head down close to hers, his mouth level with her ear.

"I love you too." he'd said. _It feels so _weird _to say it out loud… to say it to her. _

Mabel had pulled her face up from his chest and looked him in the eye with a hard expression but she didn't see anything but honesty in his gaze. He told Mabel his story, almost the mirror of her own & when he finished they sat silently together on Mabel's bed for a long time. Their hands had reached out slowly to bridge the gulf between them and when Dipper felt Mabel's skin warm and real against his own it had seemed electric.

His mind had been racing then – he wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh with joy or cry. What could he do? Loving her and thinking that it was impossible had been terrible… but knowing that she felt the same?

That scared him even more if anything.

Dipper glanced up once again at the clock and realized with a start that almost an hour had passed since he had last checked it. It was time.

Dipper hopped up off the bed and did a quick check out of the window in his room – his car was still the only one in the driveway. His father was off on a business conference and his mother was working the late shift at the hospital tonight and wouldn't be back till some ungodly hour. He felt a pang in his chest imagining how she'd feel when she came home that night and saw that his car wasn't there – what she'd do when she saw their empty rooms and heard their phones ringing unanswered on the kitchen table. What she'd think when she read the note that they had written together earlier and pinned to the fridge with a magnet.

He was going to hurt people who loved him tonight and the thought of it twisted and soured in his gut.

He took a deep breath and grabbed his backpack out from the closet, reflexively checking its zippers and pouches to make sure the contents were all there – the same as he'd done every night for two weeks now.

There was a knock on the door, just two quick beats before it swung open and Mabel bounced in with her own backpack slung over one shoulder. There was a smile on her face but Dipper could see the nervous energy that was bubbling up underneath her skin and sending her restlessly pacing into his room.

"You ready to go?" Mabel asked, a tone of extremely forced nonchalance in her voice. She sounded as if she might have been asking for a ride to the grocery store.

"Yeah- just double checking everything." Dipper said, rising from the floor and flinging the pack over his shoulder.

"Well you wouldn't be Dipper if you didn't." Mabel said teasingly, but with a note of genuine affection that cut through the nervousness. She reached out to give him a friendly poke and his own hand darted out in response to give her shoulder a soft squeeze.

"Should we take off then?" Dipper asked. For a brief moment he desperately wished that she would say 'no' and they could forget all of this, but the urge passed quickly. The thought of losing her, of even the possibility of losing her, was stronger than any fears he had about what they were going to do.

"Yeah, lets get going – no point in sticking around, right?" Mabel said.

The two fell in step as they made their way out of Dippers room together, their hands finding each other automatically and sharing strength in their twins grip.

_One month ago_

Mabel had learned the he was in love with her and the world hadn't ended, despite all of Dippers darkest fears to the contrary. Looking back on those thoughts now he felt pretty embarrassed since his life had become so much better now that she knew the truth.

It was true that their relationship had a rough start… it had staggered and lurched its way out from the awkward recognition of their feelings but their unconventional arrangement had found its feet before long and it had started to move far more quickly than either of them had anticipated. Dipper had his share of girlfriends in the past (though not an admittedly large share), but this was different. There was a closeness here, something deeper than any other connection he'd made before… No one could ever really call Mabel predictable but he _understood _her and he knew that she understood him better than anyone else ever had before. When they were together they each felt more alive than they ever had – the problem was finding the time to be together in the first place.

The secrecy had been the hardest part. They played things safe as often as they could, keeping everything low key when anyone was around and only really relaxing when they were alone… which was far less often than either of them would have liked. They had agreed that if this was going to work that they must _never _get caught. It was hardest at home… being so close together but with their parents around they might as well have been miles apart and though they tried to act normal there was now a tense undercurrent to their usual sibling banter. Sometimes Dipper felt like he was a spy infiltrating his own life, wearing a disguise that he could only remove when he and Mabel had managed to find some time to be alone out in the park, or when they drove together in Dippers beat up old sedan to the movies… or those few _very _memorable times when they'd managed to find the house all to themselves for a few hours. They'd joked about running away before – concocting elaborate fantasies of winding up on deserted islands and the like where they wouldn't be judged for how they felt. Neither of them had been serious about it, really serious that is, until a few days ago.

It had been very late, almost 3 in the morning in fact, when Dipper had finally felt safe enough to slip out from under his blankets and make his way down the hallway. Mabel had let him in with a small smile on her face and they stumbled through the darkness back to her bed without saying a word. They had been talking about trying this before and had decided that Mabel's room, which was furthest down the hall from their parents bedroom by a few crucial feet, would be the best place. Things had started relatively innocently… the plan was just to have some late night cuddling … a chance to enjoy the feeling of one another's warmth and just lose themselves in each others company the way they never could during the daytime, but it started getting just a bit more intense than either of them had planned.

The twins were lying back, Dipper wrapping Mabel in his arms and enjoying the role of Big Spoon. He'd found himself wreathed in the scent of her hair and could feel the blood warming in his veins – before he knew what he was doing he bent his head and planted a long wet kiss on Mabel's neck right at the crook of her shoulder. A barely stifled moan escaped her lips and Dipper felt her grind herself against him in response.

That just about did it for the cuddling-only plan.

She'd flipped herself around in his grip and pulled his face to hers by his hair, their lips joining together in a kiss that sent Dippers mind reeling. His own lips parted to kiss her back fiercely, and before he knew it things had started to become a blur of sounds and feelings and sensations that he'd imagined very often but never known until that night. Hands roamed over and under clothing before it was discarded entirely, sweat soaked bedsheets tangled around legs and were kicked off the bed with a mixture of muffled curses and joyful giggles and for a few life changing moments the twins both felt as if the world had stopped spinning for everyone except themselves. It had been weird and awkward and beautiful and completely unlike either of them had really imagined their first time would go, but it was all the more perfect for being unexpected.

Afterwards they were lying together, Dipper resting against a pile of old pillows and stuffed animals that had somehow managed to not get flung off the bed and had Mabel draped over his chest with her head nestled under his chin. The teens head was still spinning from trying to process what they had just done and his heart was pounding like a drummer who was being attacked by a cloud of bees, but he didn't feel anything but contentment.

It was short lived though, because Dipper felt Mabel stiffen on top of him and her fingers dug tightly into his skin. Snapping himself out of his cheerful reverie he realized that the sound of a door creaking open could be heard in the hallway, and footsteps were coming down from the direction of their parents room.

Now his heart was pounding for another reason entirely. He froze – there was nowhere to run. If he tried to leave the bed he'd probably trip and fall or the springs would creak or … oh god it was all over! Acting quickly Mabel rolled off Dippers chest, accidentally jabbing him with her elbows and knees in the process & started shoving him back against her bed until he was pressed to the wall before she buried him in a flurry of sheets and old comforters while he tried desperately not to hyperventilate out of sheer panic. Even under the pile of bedclothes Dippers terror-heightened hearing could detect the sounds of footsteps drawing closer and closer before they started to grow faint and then the slight creaking of the old staircase wormed its way up from under the door to Mabel's room. They lay deathly silent together, and Dipper was sure that if anyone did choose to peek into the room that they wouldn't be fooled for one moment by the large human shaped lump under Mabel's blanket. He felt her hand slip under the cover and find his own to give it a reassuring squeeze, and though her palms were as sweaty as his own her grip was firm and unshaking.

After a few tense minutes of waiting they heard the footsteps coming back up the stairs once again and their hands squeezed tightly to one another's as the sound drew closer to Mabel's door, but once again it was passed by. The door down the hall creaked open and clicked closed once again. Dipper didn't move out from under the blanket until what felt like an hour had passed and when he dragged himself out from under the blankets he saw Mabel lying back against her bed, her face drawn and her expression unreadable.

"That was _way _too close for comfort." Dipper whispered.

"Should we be doing this?" Mabel asked, her tone dull and worried.

Dipper felt something like panic shoot through him at the sound of those words.

"Well… maybe we should avoid any more late night meetings while they are at home…" Dipper said.

"I mean… any of this." Mabel said heavily. "When I heard their door open I couldn't stop imagining what would happen if one of them walked in… I mean, I'm pretty sure they'd kill me if they found me with some guy from school here in my bed… I can't even begin to think if they saw us… if they knew what we just did."

"Do you want to not do this anymore then? Do you want to stop?" Dipper said, forcing each word out despite how much he hated saying them. _Oh god I'm going to lose my virginity and get dumped on the same night… by my sister… there's a country song in there somewhere._

"No." Mabel said, scooting closer to Dipper and pulling him into a crushingly tight hug. "I don't _want _this to stop… I mean… I love you. Seriously, I feel it so much that I sometimes think that I'm going crazy."

"I love you too." Dipper said, feeling a lump in his throat, "and I don't want us to lose what we've got here…"

"Well what can we do? We barely ever get to spend any time together… you know, boyfriend-girlfriend time… and if we get caught even once then I think grounded doesn't even begin to describe what would happen to us." Mabel said grimly.

_They would split us apart, _Dipper thought, and it struck him like a blow to the brain to even consider the possibility. _There's no way they wouldn't if they found out. I might never get to see Mabel again._

_I can't let that happen. _

_I won't let that happen._

"What if we didn't have to worry about getting caught anymore?" Dipper said, hesitant to voice the idea that was even now starting to form in his mind.

"What, like we use magic to turn invisible or something?" Mabel asked skeptically.

"No I mean… what if we just weren't here for anyone to catch. What if we went somewhere where no one knew who we were- somewhere where no one would judge us or try to split us apart or anything." Dipper said quietly.

Mabel turned to face Dipper, her expression questioning.

"You're talking about running away aren't you?" she asked, a slight note of accusation in her voice.

"Maybe… yes. I think about it sometimes…" Dipper replied.

"Well just un-think about it then! Remember the last time we tried to run away? We didn't even make it out the neighborhood." Mabel said.

"Mabel, we were 4." Dipper said with a roll of his eyes.

"I know… but… I don't know. We'd really hurt them if we ran away." Mabel said.

"We'd hurt them even more if they found out about us," Dipper said flatly.

Mabel was quiet for a few moments after that and Dipper was cursing internally at himself for his bluntness. Everything hung in the balance now.

"Are you serious about this?" Mabel said quietly.

"Yes." Dipper said.

Another pause, just a heartbeat shorter than the first.

"Where would we go?" Mabel asked, and Dipper felt a surge of hope in his chest.

"Well, that was something I figured we could work out together…I mean, if we did this we'd be in it together, all the way." Dipper replied.

"How about Gravity Falls? If marrying woodpeckers is legal in that town then maybe we'd be alright over there too?" Mabel suggested.

"Not a bad point, though Stan would probably send us back if he found out we were in town." Dipper said.

"Alright, probably not there then… but maybe we could find someplace." Mabel said.

Silence fell again in the dark room as they each lay lost in thought for a few moments. Dipper reached his arms out and pulled Mabel in close again to plant a kiss on her forehead and then rest his face close to hers.

"I'd want us to try at least," he said.

Mabel kissed him back, her lips brushing softly against the corner of Dippers mouth and sending his heart fluttering.

"Alright… I'm in." Mabel replied quietly.

That was that. They chatted more about other things for a while without mentioning the idea, and Dipper reluctantly returned back to his room after only a while when he started to feel himself dozing off… but the seed had been planted in each of their minds.

The car sped its way along the winding stretch of road as the sun setting on the horizon transformed the sky into a gorgeous burst of colors that glittered and refracted like fairy lights through the dusty windshield. The vehicles windows were rolled slightly down since the air conditioner tended to overheat if it ran for too long & the music coming out from the ancient stereo system had sort of a static-y feedback to it but none of that mattered to Dipper at the moment.

Mabel was sitting beside him, singing along with the cheesy 80's love song playing on the radio at the top of her lungs and even through all the stress and guilt and general weirdness of the day Dipper felt a wide grin splitting his face just because she was here with him.

Life isn't a movie and Dipper knew that just because he was driving off into the sunset with the girl he loved more than anyone else in the world next to him that he wasn't automatically going to have a happy ending. He knew that this wasn't going to be easy, and that it would probably actually be a lot harder than he was imagining. Maybe the odds really were stacked against the two of them… maybe this was all impossible and there wasn't any such thing as happy ending for their story.

Then again lots of people think things like living dinosaurs, ghosts and mermaids are impossible too and Dipper had seen all of them and more with his own eyes. The world is stranger and more wonderful and terrifying than most people give it credit for, and maybe in a world where things like gnomes can exist there's enough magic left over for a happy ending for a pair of lovestruck teens.

Dipper and Mabel certainly seemed to think so.


End file.
